The government report on first-quarter productivity didn't show up as scheduled today, and the March Consumer Installment Credit report doesn't come out until late this afternoon. So, for today we'll discuss some privately-released reports that provide insight into the present status of the economy.

To begin with, the employment firm, Challenger, Gray and Christmas, announced that businesses had cut jobs by 30,800 during April. This was nearly twice the layoff rate of April 1995. What's more, for the first four months of 1996, 199,500 jobs were eliminated -- 76 percent higher than the same four-month period last year. Perhaps this news will lift the spirits of bond traders who have driven the 30-year T-bond yield from 6 percent to 7 percent in the last couple months because of fears of a tightening labor market.

In another report today, Mitsubishi Bank/Schroder-Wertheim reported that retail sales at the stores they survey declined by 2.1 percent during the week ending May 4. During the past ten weeks, week-to-week sales advanced five times, declined four times and were unchanged once. The average weekly change was +.27 percent. Compounding this over a 52-week period yields an annual gain of 15.05 percent.

In other news from the retail front, TeleCheck Services Inc., the world's largest check acceptance company, reported today that same-store check purchases in April were up 0.5 percent from the preceding month. The Telecheck findings are based on a survey of a subset of the 150,000 stores that subscribe to the TeleCheck system. Consumer expenditures account for 2/3 of the nation's Gross Domestic Product, and purchases by check account for 37% of consumer retail sales. Crunching this set of numbers results in an estimate of annualized retail sales growth of 17.48 percent. Keep in mind, however, that both of these data sets were biased to the upside because of sales related to the Easter holiday.

Transmitted: 5/7/96

Byline: Lafferty (MF Merlin)